Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain
The undulations of the ground now began to be more marked and more frequent – in fact, we did nothing but ascend and descend. We were approaching the Sierra Morena, which forms the limits of Andalusia. Behind that line of violet-coloured mountains lay hidden the paradise of our dreams. The stones already began to change into rocks, and the hills into towering mountains: thistles, six or seven feet high, rose up on the sides of the road, like the halberds of invisible soldiers. Though I have no pretensions to being an ass, I am very fond of thistles (a taste which is common both to myself and butterflies), and those I saw here surprised me. The thistle is a superb plant, which can be most advantageously studied for the production of ornamental designs. No piece of Gothic architecture possesses cleaner or more delicately-cut arabesques or foliage. From time to time we perceived in the neighbouring fields large yellow-looking patches, as if sacks of chopped straw had been emptied there; but this straw rose up in a cloud when we approached, and noisily flew away. What we mistook for straw was shoals of locusts, and there must have been millions of them: this reminded one strongly of Egypt.
It was somewhere near this place that, for the first time in my life, I really suffered from hunger. Ugolino in his tower could not have felt more famished than I did, and I had not, like him, four sons to devour. The reader, who has seen me swallow two cups of chocolate at Val-de-Peñas, is perhaps astonished at this premature hunger; but Spanish cups are not larger than a thimble, and do not hold more than two or three spoonfuls. My melancholy was greatly augmented at the venta, where we left our escort, on seeing a magnificent omelet, intended for the soldiers' dinner, assume a golden hue beneath a sunbeam that came down the chimney. I prowled about it like a ravenous wolf, but it was too well guarded for me to carry off. Luckily, however, a lady from Granada, who was in the diligence with us, took pity on my martyrdom, and gave me a slice of La Mancha ham cured in sugar, with a piece of bread which she kept in reserve in one of the pockets of the vehicle. May this ham be returned to her an hundredfold!
Not far from this venta, on the right hand side of the road, stood some pillars, on which were seen three or four malefactors' heads – a spectacle always adapted to tranquillize your mind, and which proves that you are in a civilized country. The road kept rising, and assuming various zigzag forms. We were about to pass by the Puerto de los Perros: this is a narrow defile – a breach, in fact, made in the mountain by a torrent, which leaves just room enough for the road by its side. The Puerto de los Perros (passage of dogs) is thus named, because through it the vanquished Moors went out of Andalusia, taking with them the happiness and civilization of Spain. Spain, which stands in the same relation to Africa as Greece did to Asia, is not fitted for European manners. The genius of the East is apparent there in all its forms, and it is perhaps to be regretted that Spain is not still Moorish and Mahometan.
It would be impossible to imagine anything more picturesque or grand than this entrance to Andalusia. The defile is cut through immense rocks of red marble, the gigantic layers of which rise one above the other with a sort of architectural regularity. These enormous blocks, with their large transversal fissures – those veins of mountain marble, a sort of terrestrial subject, deprived of skin, on which to study the anatomy of the globe – are of such proportions, that they make the largest granite of Egypt appear microscopical by their side. In the interstices are palm oaks and enormous cork-trees, which do not appear larger there than do tufts of herb on an ordinary-sized wall. On reaching the bottom of the defile, you perceive that the vegetation increases in richness, and forms an impenetrable thicket, through which you see, sparkling in different places, the bright water of the torrent. The edge is so rugged on the side of the road, that it has been judged prudent to place a parapet along it, without which the diligence, which is always going very fast, and which it is very difficult to drive, on account of the frequent bends, might easily turn a somersault of some five or six hundred feet.
It was in the Sierra Morena that the knight of the rueful countenance accomplished, in imitation of Amadis on the rock, that famous act of penance which consisted in tumbling about in his shirt on the sharpest rocks, and that Sancho Panza, the positive man, the representative of vulgar reason by the side of noble madness, found Cardenio's portmanteau so well filled with ducats and fine shirts. You cannot make a step in Spain without meeting with something to remind you of Don Quixote; so truly national is the work of Cervantes, and so true is it that these two personages sum up in themselves the whole Spanish character – chivalrous exaltation of mind, and an adventurous spirit joined to great good practical sense, and a sort of goodnature full of finesse and causticity.
At Venta de Cardona where we changed mules, I saw a pretty little child with a complexion of the most dazzling whiteness, lying in his cradle, and resembling a wax Jesus in his manger. The Spaniards, when they are not burnt by the sun, are in general exceedingly fair.
As soon as the Sierra Morena is passed, the aspect of the country undergoes a total change; it is like going all at once from Europe to Africa; vipers, crawling to their nests, leave their oblique marks on the fine gravel of the roads; and the aloe begins to brandish its large thorny sabres at the sides of the ditches. These large fans of thick, brawny, bluish-grey leaves immediately throw a different appearance over the whole landscape. You feel that you are in a new country; you understand that you have really quitted Paris; but the difference in the climate, in the architecture, and in the costumes, does not astonish you so much as the presence of the large vegetables belonging to the torrid regions, and which we are only accustomed to behold in hothouses, in France. The laurels, the holm oaks, the cork, and the fig-trees, with their varnished and metallic-looking foliage, have about them something free, robust, and wild, which indicates a climate in which nature is more powerful than man, and in which she can do without him.
Before us extended the fine country of Andalusia, unfolding itself to our view, like an immense panorama. The scene possessed the grandeur and appearance of the sea: chains of mountains, which distance confounded with the sky itself, succeeded one another, with the gentlest undulations, like long rows of billows of azure. Large clouds of white vapour filled up the intervals; and here and there the rays of the sun streaked with gold some of the nearer mountain-tops, and made them sparkle with a thousand colours like a pigeon's breast. Other ridges, curiously irregular, resembled those draperies in ancient pictures which were yellow on one side and blue on the other. The whole was inundated with a most dazzling and splendid light, similar to that which must have illuminated the terrestrial paradise. It streamed through this ocean of mountains like liquid gold and silver, dashing a phosphorescent foam of spangles on every obstacle it met with. The scene before us was much more vast than the grandest perspectives of Martin, and infinitely more beautiful. The infinite in things filled with light is sublime and stupendous in a far different manner to the infinite in things smothered in darkness.
While gazing on this wonderful picture, which varied in appearance and presented us with fresh splendours at each turn of our wheels, we saw appear on the horizon the pointed roofs of Carolina's symmetrical pavilions, a sort of model village, or agricultural phalansterium, formerly founded by the Count of Florida Blanca, and peopled by him, at a great expense, with Germans and Swiss. This village, built all of a sudden, and raised at the will of one man, possesses that tedious regularity which is unknown in places which rise gradually, and in obedience to the caprice of chance and time. Everything has been done by line and rule: from the middle of the place you can see the whole town; here is the market of the Plaza de Toros; here is the church, and here is the house of the alcade. All this is certainly very nice, but I prefer the most wretched village which has taken its form at random. The colony has not, however, succeeded; the Swiss became affected with nostalgia and died off like flies, on merely hearing the bells sound; the ringing of them was therefore obliged to be discontinued. They did not all die, however, and the population of Carolina still preserves traces of its German origin. We had a solid dinner at Carolina served up with some excellent wine, and I was not obliged to take double portions: we now no longer travelled with the courier, as the roads are perfectly safe in these parts.
Aloe-trees, more and more African in size and shape, continued to rise along the sides of the road, and towards the left a long garland of flowers of the deepest rose-colour, glittering in a foliage of emeralds, marked out all the sinuosities of the bed of a dried up rivulet. Profiting by a halt made to change mules, my companion ran and gathered an enormous bouquet of these flowers; they were rose-bays of the greatest beauty and freshness. We might put to this rivulet, with the name of which I am not acquainted, and which perhaps has none, the same question that Monsieur Casimir Delavigne puts to the Greek river —
"Eurotas, Eurotas, que font tes lauriers-roses?"
To the rose-bays succeeded, like a melancholy reflection after a silvery burst of laughter, tall olive-trees whose pale leaves remind you of the white foliage of the willows of the North, and which harmonize admirably well with the ashy colour of the ground. These leaves, which are of a grave, austere, and gentle tint, were most judiciously chosen by the ancients, those skilful estimators of natural evidence, as the symbol of peace and wisdom.
It was about four o'clock when we arrived at Baylen, famous for the disastrous capitulation which is known by this name. We were to pass the night there, and while waiting for supper we went to take a stroll through the town and about the environs with the lady from Granada, and a very pretty young girl who was going with her father and mother to take sea-baths at Malaga; for the general reserve of the Spaniards quickly gives way to polite and cordial familiarity, as soon as they are certain that you are neither a commercial traveller, nor a tight-rope dancer, nor a hawker of pomatum.
The church of Baylen, the construction of which does not date much further back than the sixteenth century, astonished me by its strange colour. Its stone and marble baked by the sun of Spain, instead of turning black as such things do in our damp climate, had assumed red hues of the most extraordinary vividness, and which even inclined to saffron and purple, resembling in their tints vine-leaves at the end of autumn. At the side of the church, a palm-tree, the first I had ever seen in the open air, rose above a little wall gilt by the reflection of the sun's burning rays, and abruptly spread out its branches in the dark azure of the heavens. This palm-tree – a sudden revelation from the East – thus met unexpectedly at the corner of a street, produced a singular effect on me. I expected, every instant, to see the profile of the camel's ostrich-like neck appear in the glimmering light thrown out by the setting sun, and the white bournous of the Arab float along the ranks of the caravan.
Some rather picturesque ruins of ancient fortifications presented to our view a tower, in a sufficiently good state of preservation to allow us to ascend it by the aid of our hands and feet and the jutting out of the stones. We were rewarded for our trouble by one of the most magnificent sights it is possible to behold. The city of Baylen, with its tiled roofs, its red church, and its white houses huddled round the foot of the tower like a flock of goats, formed a charming foreground: further on were immense corn-fields, undulating like waves of gold, and right at the back, above several ranges of mountains, the ridge of the Sierra Nevada glittered in the distance like a chain of silver. Veins of snow, played on by the light, brightly sparkled and sent forth prismatic flashes; while the sun, similar to a large golden wheel, of which its disc was the nave, spread out its flaming rays, like spokes, in a sky tinged with all the hues of the agate and the advanturine.
The inn at which we were to pass the night was a large building consisting but of one immense room, with a fireplace at each end, a roof of timberwork, shiny and black with smoke, racks on each side for horses, mules, and donkeys; and having, for the accommodation of travellers, a few small lateral chambers, containing each a bed formed of three planks placed on two trestles, and covered with those pellicles of canvass, in which floated a few lumps of wool, and which hotel-keepers, with the usual effrontery and sang froid which characterize them, call mattresses; but this, however, did not hinder us from snoring like Epimenides and the Seven Sleepers all together.
We set off very early in the morning to avoid the heat, and we again saw the beautiful rose-bays, as resplendent as glory and as blooming as love, which had enchanted us the evening before. The Guadalquiver, with its troubled and yellowish waters, soon appeared to bar our passage; we crossed it in a ferry-boat, and took the road to Jaen. To our left was pointed out to us the tower of Torrequebradilla, on which a sunbeam was playing, and we soon perceived the strange outline of the city of Jaen, the capital of the province of that name. An enormous mountain, of the colour of ochre, as tawny as a lion's skin, variegated with stripes of red and brown, and enveloped in clouds of light, rises abruptly in the middle of the city; massive towers, and long, zigzag lines of fortification streak its barren sides and give them a fantastic and picturesque appearance. The Cathedral, an immense mass of architecture, which seems, from a distance, to be larger than the town itself, rears its head haughtily, like an artificial mountain by the side of the natural one. This cathedral, which is of the Renaissance style of architecture, and which boasts of possessing the true handkerchief in which Saint Veronica took the impression of our Saviour's face, was built by the duke of Medina Coeli. It is certainly a handsome building, but we had imagined it, at a distance, to be both more antique and more curious.
On our way from the Parador to the cathedral, I took care to inspect the play-bills, and found that, the evening before, Mérope had been played, and that that evening would be given "El Campanero de San Pablo," por el illustrissimo señor don Jose Bouchardy; or, in other words, "Le Sonneur de Saint Paul," by my friend Bouchardy. To have your pieces played at Jaen, a barbarous town, where the inhabitants never go out without a poniard in their belt and a carabine on their shoulder, is certainly very flattering, and very few of our contemporary geniuses are able to boast of a like success. If we formerly borrowed a few chefs-d'œuvre of the Spanish stage, we fully repay, at present, in vaudevilles and in melodramas, the value of all we have taken.
On leaving the cathedral we returned, with the other travellers, to the Parador, the appearance of which seemed to promise an excellent repast; a café was attached to it, and it had quite the look of a European and civilized establishment. Some one discovered, however, on taking his place, that the bread was as hard as a mill-stone, and asked for some other. But the hotel-keeper obstinately refused to change it. During the quarrel, another person perceived that the dishes had been warmed up, and must have already appeared on the table some time back. Hereupon, every person present began to utter the most plaintive cries and to insist on having a perfectly fresh dinner that had never appeared before. And now for the secret of this: the diligence which preceded us had been stopped by the brigands of La Mancha, and the travellers, whom they had carried off into the mountains, had not been able to partake of the repast prepared for them by the hotel-keeper at Jaen. The latter, in order not to be out of pocket, had kept the dishes, and served them up again for us; but he was deceived in his expectations, for we all left his house, and went elsewhere to satisfy our hunger. The unlucky dinner was, no doubt, presented, for a third time, to the next travellers.
We repaired to an obscure posada, where, after waiting a long while, we obtained some cutlets, some eggs, and a salad, all served up in chipped plates, accompanied by odd knives and forks, and glasses, each of which belonged to a different set. The banquet was very mediocre, but it was seasoned with so much laughter, and so many jokes about the comic fury of the hotel-keeper when he saw his company leave in procession, as well as about the fate of the poor victims to whom he would not fail to re-present his emaciated chickens, warmed up for the third time, as perfectly fresh, that we were fully compensated, and even more than compensated, for the poorness of our fare. As soon as the icy reserve of the Spaniards once begins to wear away, they immediately indulge in an infantine and naïve gaiety, full of charming sweetness. The least thing makes them laugh till the tears run down their faces.
It was at Jaen that I saw more national and picturesque costumes than anywhere else. The men were attired, for the most part, in blue velvet breeches, adorned with silver filigrane buttons, and Ronda gaiters embellished with aiglets and stitching, and worked with arabesques on leather of a darker colour. It is considered the height of elegance to button but the first two or three buttons, at the top and bottom, so as to let the calf be seen. Wide sashes of red or yellow silk, jackets of brown cloth variously trimmed, blue or maroon cloaks, pointed hats with slouched brims, ornamented with bands of velvet and silk tassels, complete the costume, which is very similar to the ancient dress of Italian brigands: others wore what is called a vestido de cazador (hunter's dress), which is made entirely of buckskin of a tawny colour, and of green velvet.
Some women of the lower class had red cloaks and hoods, which seemed to make the darker part of the crowd sparkle brightly, and to bespangle it with scarlet. The fantastic style of dress, the swarthy complexion, the energy depicted in the features, the fiery eyes, with the calm and impassible attitude of these majos, more numerous here than anywhere else, impart to the population of Jaen an aspect more African than European: an illusion which is kept up still more by the intense heat of the climate, the dazzling whiteness of the houses, which are all whitewashed in the Arabian fashion, the tawny colour of the ground, and the unchanging azure of the sky. The following proverb on Jaen is in current use in Spain: "Ugly town, bad people;" but no painter would ever admit it to be true. But then, there as here, a handsome town in the eyes of most people is a town laid out by rule and line, and furnished with a certain number of lamps and tradesmen.
On leaving Jaen, you enter a valley which stretches as far as the Vega de Granada. The beginning of it is arid; barren mountains continually crumbling away through dryness scorch you, like burning mirrors, with their canescent reverberation; the only sign of vegetation is to be found in a few sickly-looking tufts of fennel. But soon the valley becomes narrower and deeper; streams begin to flow, and vegetation reappears, bringing with it shade and coolness. The Rio of Jaen occupies the bottom of the valley, where it rushes rapidly along between the stones and rocks which torment it and stop its course at every instant. By it runs the road, which follows it in all its sinuosities; for, in mountainous countries, the torrents are as yet the most skilful engineers in tracing out routes, and the wisest thing to do is to follow their directions.
A peasant's cottage at which we stopped to drink was surrounded by two or three little gutters of running water, which emptied themselves, at a short distance further on, into a cluster of pomegranate-trees, myrtles, pistachio-trees, and others of every kind, in a most extraordinarily flourishing condition. It was so long since we had seen anything really green, that this wild and almost entirely uncultivated garden appeared a little terrestrial paradise to us.
The young girl who brought us our beverage in one of those delightful porous clay pots which keep the water so cool, was extremely pretty; her eyes were long, reaching to beneath the temples, and her mouth, which was as blooming and as red as a beautiful pink, contrasted admirably with her tawny complexion. She wore a flannel petticoat and velvet shoes, of which she appeared very proud and careful. This style of beauty, which is frequently met with in Granada, is evidently Moorish.
At one point, the valley becomes extremely narrow, and the rocks project to such an extent, that they but just leave room enough for the Rio. Formerly, vehicles were obliged to enter and proceed along the very bed of the torrent, which it was somewhat perilous for them to do, on account of the holes and stones at the bottom of the river, and of the rising of the water, which, in winter, must be considerable. In order to remedy this inconvenience, a viaduct, similar to a railway tunnel, has been made right through one of the rocks. This subterraneous passage, which is on a rather extensive scale, was constructed only a few years back.
The valley soon widens again, however, and the road ceases to be obstructed. Here my recollection fails me for several leagues. Overcome by the heat, which the weather, inclining to storm, rendered suffocating, I fell asleep; and when I awoke, night, which comes on so suddenly in southern climates, enveloped everything, and an awful wind was sweeping before it clouds of inflamed dust: this wind must have been a very near relation of the African sirocco, and I don't know how we escaped being stifled. The form of every object disappeared in the fog of dust; and the sky, generally so splendid during the summer night, resembled the vault of an oven: it was impossible to see two paces before you. We entered Granada at about two in the morning, and alighted at the Fonda del Comercio, a soi-disant French hotel, where there were no sheets on the beds, and where we slept on the tables in our clothes: but these trifling tribulations produced little effect on us; for we were at Granada, and, in a few hours, we should see the Alhambra and the Generalife.
Our first care was to request a cicerone to take us to a casa de pupilos, – that is, a private house in which boarders are received, for, as it was our intention to remain some time at Granada, the mediocre hospitality of the Fonda del Comercio was far from calculated to promote our comfort during a long sojourn. This cicerone, of the name of Louis, was a Frenchman, and came from Farmoutiers in Brie. He had deserted during the French invasion under Bonaparte, and had lived at Granada for twenty years. He was the most comical figure imaginable: his height – he was five feet eight – contrasted most singularly with his little head, which was as wrinkled as a shrivelled apple and about as large as your fist. Being deprived of all communication with France, he had preserved his Brie jargon in all its native purity, spoke like an Opéra Comique Jeannot, and seemed to be perpetually reciting the words of Monsieur Etienne. In spite of so long a sojourn, his thick head had refused to stock itself with a single new idiom: he was hardly acquainted with the most indispensable phrases. The only things Spanish he had about him were the alpargatas, and the little Andalusian hat with its turned-up brim. The fact, however, of being Spanish even to this extent sorely vexed him, and he revenged himself by showering on every Spaniard he met all sorts of injurious epithets – in his Brie jargon, be it understood, for Master Louis had a particular dread of hard blows, and took as much care of his skin as if it had been worth something.
He took us to a very respectable house, in the Calle de Parragas, near the Plazuela de San Antonio, and at a stone's throw from the Carrera del Darro. The mistress of this boarding-house had lived for a long time at Marseilles and spoke French, which circumstance immediately induced us to take up our abode there, as our vocabulary was still very limited.
They put us into a room on the ground floor: this room was whitewashed, and its entire furniture consisted of a rose of different colours in the middle of the ceiling, but then it had the advantage of opening into a patio, surrounded by white marble columns with Moorish capitals, procured, no doubt, at the demolition of some ancient Arabian palace. A little basin, with a jet of water in it, dug in the middle of the court, kept the whole place cool; an immense piece of esparto matting, which formed the tendido, let in a subdued light, and made the ground, paved and marked out into compartments with pebbles, glitter here and there, as if studded with shining stars.
It was in the patio that we took our meals, read, and lived. We used our room for hardly anything but to dress and sleep in. Were it not for the patio, an architectural arrangement which reminds you of the ancient Roman cavædium, the houses in Andalusia would not be inhabitable. The sort of hall which precedes it is generally paved with small pebble-stones of various colours, forming designs in rough mosaic-work, now representing vases of flowers, now soldiers and caltrops, or simply stating the time when the patio was constructed.
From the top of our abode, which was surmounted by a kind of mirador, we could perceive, above the summit of a hill standing out boldly on the blue sky, and through groups of trees, the massive towers of the Alhambra, clothed by the sun in deep red, fire-like tints. The view was rendered complete by two large cypresses placed in juxtaposition, and the dark points of which rose into the sky above the walls of red. These cypresses are never lost sight of: whether you are climbing the snow-streaked sides of the Mulhacen, or wandering about the Vega or the Sierra de Elvira, they are always to be perceived, dark and motionless in the mist of the blue or golden vapour with which the roofs of the houses appear, at a distance, to be enveloped.
Granada is built on three hills, at the end of the plain of the Vega: the Vermilion Towers – thus named on account of their colour (Torres Bermejas), and which are asserted to be of Roman or even Phœnician origin – occupy the first and the least elevated of these eminences; the Alhambra, which is in itself an entire city, covers the second and highest hill with its square towers, connected with one another by lofty walls and immense substructures, which form an enclosure containing gardens, woods, houses, and squares; the Albaycin is situated on the third hillock, which is separated from the others by a deep ravine choked with vegetation and full of cactuses, coloquintidas, pistachio-trees, pomegranate-trees, rose-bays, and tufts of flowers, and at the bottom of which flows the Darro, with the rapidity of an Alpine torrent. The Darro, which has gold in its stream, traverses the city now beneath the open sky, now under bridges so long that they rather merit the name of vaults, and joins itself in the Vega, at a little distance from the parade, to the Xenil which is contented with containing silver. The course of the torrent through the city is called Carrera del Darro, and a magnificent view is obtained from the balconies of those houses which border it. The Darro wears away its shores very much, and causes frequent slips of earth; there exists, in consequence, an old couplet, sung by children, which alludes to this mania for carrying everything away, and accounts for it in a peculiar manner. The following are the lines in question: —
"Darro tiene prometido
El casarse con Xenil
Y le ha de llevar en dote
Plaza Nueva y Zacatin,"
The gardens called Carmenes del Darro, and of which such charming descriptions are to be found in Spanish and Moorish poetry, are situated on the banks of the Carrera, on the same side as the fountain of los Avellanos.
The city is thus divided into four quarters: the Antequerula, which occupies the brow of the hill, or rather of the mountain, on which the Alhambra is situated; the Alhambra and its appendix the Generalife; the Albaycin, formerly a vast fortress, but now a ruined and depopulated quarter; and Granada proper, which extends into the plain round the cathedral, and the place of the Vivarambla, which forms a separate quarter.
Such is the topographical aspect of Granada, traversed in its entire width by the Darro, bordered by the Xenil, which washes the alameda (parade), and sheltered by the Sierra Neveda, which you perceive from the corner of every street, and which seems so near, in consequence of the transparency of the air, that you fancy you can touch it with your hand from the balcony or the mirador of your house.
The general aspect of Granada greatly deceives the ideas you may have formed. In spite of yourself – in spite of the numerous deceptions you have already experienced – you cannot bring your mind to believe that three or four hundred years, and streams of matter-of-fact citizens have passed over the theatre of so many romantic and chivalrous actions. You picture to yourself a half-Moorish, half-Gothic city, where open-worked towers are mixed with minarets, and where gables alternate with terraced roofs; you expect to see houses sculptured and ornamented with coats of arms and heroic devices, grotesque buildings, with their stories overlapping one another, projecting joists, windows adorned with Persian carpets and blue and white vases – in short, the reality of an opera scene, representing some wonderful perspective of the Middle Ages.
